Business4Land: De-risk and Scale to Restore 1.5bn Hectares of Land - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

commitments to action and from action to investment. Thank you.

Many thanks, State Secretary. Thank you so much. Simon, now let's take this conversation into the climate conversation. Of course, land restoration still struggles to get the attention it deserves in climate finance discussions despite its potential for both carbon removal and resilience. So You understand we're very action oriented here. So what is your call to action for putting land higher on the climate finance agenda on this triple COP year?

Hello. Yep. You mentioned it in your opening that we need to convert ambition commitments into action. This year we have the three Rio conventions all holding their COPs. We left Brazil last year, COP30, with a very clear call to action, which was we have now moved into the era of implementation. We must leave Mongolia, we must leave Armenia with that clear focus on implementation. And this is not about merging mandates, but aligning actions where those actions intersect across the three conventions. Each convention has its action plan, whether it's our NDCs within climate, whether it is LDNs, whether it's NBSAPs, it is about finding those common overlaps and working smartly on those intersections. So whether that is forests, whether it's soils, whether it is food systems, water, ecosystem restoration, resilience building, adaptation, and critically, critically on finance, on capacity building, on technology. So, you know, we've The conventions were established 34 years ago. This is no longer the time to be discussing how where these intersects exist. It is absolutely clear. It's how do we work smartly and how do we address those common areas? And at the heart of it, is finance and means of implementation and how we work smartly in applying the very limited resources. How do we work smartly? How do we work with the private sector, other actors in terms of innovative financing, and then translating that into implementation that means something for ordinary people on the ground?

Many thanks, Simon. Smartly, that means working collectively, working efficiently, but importantly, working collectively. Many thanks for that. We're now going to focus on biodiversity with you, Astrid. What is your call to action on this triple COP year? And what does business need to start doing differently on biodiversity right now?

Thank you so much. So first of all, I would say do as Simon says. So we come from two different conventions. We look at the same crisis from different perspectives and we come to the same solutions. I think that is very meaningful. My call to action for business is really First of all, don't stand on the brakes, but then certainly also don't sit on the sidelines in all these crops. So it is really important that business becomes an actor in this global transition that we're all working towards. And by that I mean, first of all, is use a triple crop year as an opportunity for integrated business strategies that don't look at land, don't have a land strategy, a biodiversity strategy, a climate strategy, but try and have an integrated strategy for resilience, for long-term value creation and for competitiveness. And of course, there's always easier said than done. But when I say business shouldn't be sitting on the sidelines but engaging in negotiations, what I mean by that is really come to these COPs not just to network and to do side events, but to engage in the actual negotiations and bring to the table what you need in terms of enabling conditions to make the right investments. And the elephant in the room that we have to address, particularly in nature finance, is the overwhelming nature negative spending, which I quote wherever I go, this unfortunate 30 to one ratio of nature negative spending versus nature positive spending. Now that has to be addressed. Business plays a role in that because the majority of these 7.3 trillion that were spent annually on nature negative activity are actually business investments, but they are propped up by government subsidies to the order of 2.4 trillion. So let's engage this business with government to make sure that we have subsidy reform that is not putting business out of business, but that changes the way business engages and makes business more nature positive, more resilient, but also more engaged in this global debate on how to preserve biodiversity and thereby also fight climate change. And I think that's my main call. So be active, be engaged and do more than side events.

Keep going, in other words. Many thanks, Astrid, for that. Samet, now, you are carrying the baton from this triple COP year towards COP31 in Turkey, of course. So from that vantage point, what is your call to action for keeping land and biodiversity connected to the climate finance agenda as we move from COP17 to COP31?

First of all, thank you for your great question. My call to action is to people who are not in the negotiation rooms, because that is.

Who I work for.

In the climate process, we learned something 10 years ago that this convention maybe or is learning now, governments alone cannot deliver the targets.

Governments sets.

So at Paris, we created the champions. and around them the Marrakesh Partnership and the Global Climate Action Agenda. Today, more than 480 initiatives run by cities, companies, investors, communities connected to formal process rather than it from outside. Here is what we discovered. Non-state actors do not fail to act because they lack ambitions. They fail because nobody tells them what counts and nobody gives them a way back into the systems with what they have done. So my call to action for this triple COP year is this, every city's company and investor in this room is already working on land. Whatever they call it that or not, a supply chain is land, a watershed is land, a city's food system is land, name it, measure it and report it once into a process that will recognize it three times. And to my colleagues from the three conventions, let us not build three separate ways for them to do that. We have all years to agree on once.

Thank you again.

Thank you very much, Samit. Thank you. I have another round of questions for our distinguished panelists here, but we're running out of time, sadly. So let's do it very, very quickly, if you allow me. Starting with the State Secretary here. I'd like to ask you what Business for Land can actually do, maybe in one sentence only.

I think Business for Land can play a very practical role. If you want real cooperation between Rio conventions, we need to see through real projects, investment and results on the ground. Mongolia already has concrete opportunities. As I said before, the Billion Tree National Movement can attract investment in land restoration. And our new sand and dust storm initiative also creates opportunities to in early warning systems and environmental data and resilient infrastructure. But both initiatives need more private investment to grow. So my message to Business for Land and the companies here today is simple. Come and work with us. We can develop practical and bankable projects together bring in public and private finance and show that investing in land, climate and biodiversity can also create long term economic value. Mongolia is ready with the projects and partnerships. Now we need to partners to help us take to the scale. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Piyamba, I'm very much aware we've not heard from you yet, but I was saving you last because we heard from government and I'd like to hear the voice of business, the business sector here in Mongolia. So from your perspective, what is your call to action for your peers on this triple COP year? And there again, can you tell us a bit more about what the Business for Land Forum can do?

Thank you, Charlotte. So I'll take your note. You reminded me time, time, time this morning. So again, ministers, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen, very happy to be here. And the reason why COPs are important for Mongolia, I'll tell you one stat. We talked about a lot of numbers this morning. 2.2 degrees since 1940. the dry lands in Mongolia, and State Secretary mentioned how much of the land is degraded, right? So we are getting warming up almost twice as the global average in this country, which directly impacts business, right? And this impacts the business I do, which is energy transition, right? This impacts the business that is very important for this country, which is mining. So what we are trying to do with our partnership with UNCCD and Business for Land and the Business Council of Mongolia is to bring in this important sector, which is called mining, into the platform. And we all talked about this morning that this is a platform to bring people and then business unusual. How do we make it smarter? and executive secretary was mentioning smart. So I think that that's really what we are trying to achieve, bring the people together. And we already had a number of events, as you may know, in the last really two years heading up to this COP, gathering business people and our champions are here today, fellow champions. So I'm very happy that those of you who are here, you were able to travel and come to Mongolia to again, share your experiences. We all understand finance investment is necessary, right? We all understand technology is important, but how do you basically get that into the actions that we are trying to gather around? So again, very thankful and honored to be with the two executive secretaries of the other two COPs.

And very, very quickly, what does the private sector actually need from Business for Land to move from statements to actual capital?

So we have three pillars, right, at Business for Land. That's business transformation and finance and advocacy. So I've been focusing a lot on the advocacy side of things heading up to the COP17. And at Riyadh we started, now we are taking it for the next two years. So I think gathering our messages is very important because business knows what to do, right? We all know what to do, but gathering our messages is important because that's where I think we get more awareness from not only the governments, but also as we saw Laura Piana's very excellent work in Mongolia, right? And that awareness needs to be built.

Many thanks for that. Simon, very briefly, what can Business for Land actually do to connect climate capital to land and biodiversity?

So I think there are two things. First is translate. Translate what's taking place in these negotiating rooms. Convention negotiating language speak. is very abstract to the business community and the private sector. So it's that translation and that translation needs to speak to risks, but importantly, most importantly, opportunities. The second is a bridge, and that's a bridge between government and the private sector. Again, providing that trend, not just that translation component, but being able to mobilize, being able to network, being able to join up policy to business opportunities, to all of those project pipelines that we keep talking about.

Many thanks, Simon. So translating, making the language that we hear so much at COP accessible to the business community so they can take action and make it meaningful indeed. Astrid, What can the business for land community can actually do?

Thank you so much. So I think it would be good if business for land, the Marrakesh partnership, and then the global partnership for business and biodiversity could find a common voice and interact as one with the three Rio conventions. Now, specifically, After the triple COP year, I think the three Rio conventions need to take stock of all the decisions that have been taken, and maybe we can move forward to things such as common investment platforms and common resource mobilization strategies so that it makes it easier for business to engage. And one very concrete suggestion, under our framework, we have a target on business disclosure with associated indicators. Let's see how we can bring in land degradation neutrality into that framework so that business does not do separate reporting and separate accounting to different indicators and different standards. Thank you.

Thank you Astrid. Samit, as we look ahead to COP31, what can Business for Land do right now to prepare?

Thank you.

I will answer this from experience. Business for Land is building what the climate process spent decades developing and three are two important lessons.

First.

The interface must be connected to process business business for land already has that advantage thought its mandate from 197 parties second it must work both ways companies bring action investment and Innovation that should gain recognition partnership and clear pathways to Finance thank you again I hope we will meet in Antalya with all our listeners. Thank you again.

And many thanks to all our speakers for this conversation. Let's have a round of applause, please, for all the panelists to join us on stage. And you are going to be staying with me because it's now time for a group picture. Can I please invite all the speakers who are on stage here with us this morning to come and join us here in order to take a last group picture. Thank you. And that includes, of course, Aruuna Dorjsuren from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change in Mongolia.

Okay.

Once again, many thanks to all our wonderful panelists, speakers. Thank you so much for being with us here this morning. And many thanks to you in the audience for taking part in the poll and for your attention. With that transition, we are moving to a very important conversation moderated by Sarah Toomey here on land as an asset class. Sarah, welcome.

Thank you, Charlotte. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Sarah Toumi, and I will be your moderator for the next 45 minutes. This session is actually a simple ask and an urgent question. What would it take for land to be treated as a genuine asset class? not just an environmental item, but something investors, companies and governments actively price, manage and grow. We will hear from science community, governments and business on exactly that. Without further ado, I would like to, it's my pleasure to welcome His Excellency, Mr. Morkhombad, Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Mongolia, who will set the scene from the host country's own experience. excellency, welcome.

Thank you. Once again, good afternoon. So it is a pleasure to join you for this session on land as an asset class. The financing gap for land restoration and drought resilience is significant. According to the UNCCD, around 355 billion USD is needed annually to meet double land restoration and drought related targets. However, the current annual investment is approximately 77 billion USD. So addressing this gap, it requires more engagement from the private sector and financial institutions, alongside the public and development finance. For Mongolia, this is also relevant. Our range land is dry land support pastoral livelihoods. biodiversity and drought resilience. However, many of these benefits are not fully reflected in the investment decisions. So we need to better measure, demonstrate and finance the value of the sustainable land management and restoration. This is one of the priorities of Mongolia's step action agenda, which we are advancing as a COP17 legacy. The action agenda includes three flagship initiatives, the range and flagship initiative, water land Nexus initiative and the natural based solution for a sustainable infrastructure initiative. Even though they focus on different areas, they are all aimed to develop practical solutions, build partnerships and attract investment at scale. The finance is key part of all three initiatives. Across these initiatives, we're working to develop strong project pipelines that are ready for investment. In this context, The Business for Land Initiative provides an important platform for strengthening private sector engagement and investment in the land restoration. Closing the financing gap will require more capital, better ways for businesses to set targets, report impacts, and manage risks. We need innovative financial tools that can reduce the risk of long-term restoration investments. Blended finance, guarantees, insurance, and technical support can help attract more investment. We also should ensure that investment models reflect local needs and local communities are meaningfully involved and benefit from the sustainable land management. Throughout this step action agenda and Business for Land, Mongolia aims to support the development of the scalable investable approach to the land restoration and drought resilience. I look forward to this discussion and to hear from our partners on how we can further strengthen the investment case for sustainable land management. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Your Excellency, for grounding this conversation in Mongolia's own experience as host. To show how that kind of ambition translates into corporate accountability, please welcome on stage Craig Biddy of the Science-Based Target Network, who will present the SBTN land case studies for Pakistan and Mongolia. Welcome.

Hello, thank you, Sarah, and thank you to the government of Mongolia and for UNCCD's Business for Land program. My name is Craig Beatty. I work for World Wildlife Fund, and I co-lead the Science-Based Targets Network Land Hub with Conservation International. Today, I will talk about science-based targets as a mechanism for corporate action to align with global goals for nature. So science-based targets themselves support corporate engagement in our global goals for nature across all three Rio conventions. We look for corporate engagement to support the objectives of all three conventions, and we've heard that today. We know that land degradation and conversion is the number one driver of terrestrial biodiversity loss, and that degradation has impacts on livelihoods, it has impacts on people, and it has impacts on countries. but it also has impacts on corporate supply chains and commodity production as well. So I'm gonna talk about science-based targets today and to show how they align with specifically land degradation neutrality targets under a UNCCD. So science-based targets themselves turn our global environmental and nature goals into scientifically backed and time-bound commitments from companies. And science-based targets themselves are not new. The science-based targets initiative for climate has existed for some time and is among the most successful corporate engagement strategies that we've yet devised. There are over 13,000 companies globally that have set emissions reductions targets under the Science Based Targets initiative. And what our mission is in the Science Based Targets Network is to translate the success of science based targets for climate into the realm of land, freshwater, oceans, and the biodiversity that's inherent in those systems. To do that, we use a contemporary mitigation hierarchy that you see here that very closely mirrors UNCCD's objectives of reducing pressures on land, assessing and restoring land, and removing the impacts of land degradation and conversion from the world. SBT in itself is an organization that's composed of over 80 partner organizations, including non-governmental organizations like WWF and Conservation International, World Resources Institute and the Nature Conservancy, all of whom support the development of land targets. but also includes donors, financial institutions, consultancies, and a large number of partners that stand behind the corporate target setting mechanism for companies to align themselves with Global Goals for Nature. So I'll speak briefly about the land targets before I talk about two specific case studies of how they align with land degradation neutrality targets for two countries. for our land targets, we ask companies to commit to no conversion of natural ecosystems. And we hear a lot about restoration during this week. I used to work on the Bond Challenge and on assessing restoration opportunities for many years. And restoration does not mean very much if conversion continues. And so what we ask companies to do in our no conversion of natural ecosystems targets is to look at the production systems and commodities that they source that have high impacts on land and to eliminate the conversion associated with the production or sourcing of those commodities. Our second target, which will be launched as part of our second version of SBTN Land in October, is the working land regeneration and restoration target. And we have spent years developing the science behind how to provide companies with the specific targets that they can set to know what is enough. And so we hear a lot about companies needing to be in the room to invest in nature, but this cannot be an open-ended contribution from companies. Companies need to know when they've done enough to meet our global goals for nature. And what this target does is to provide the resources across natural land cover assessment to know how much natural land cover is enough, to know how much a reduction in agricultural footprint or intensity might be required in a place. And most specifically, we have new targets for companies on soil organic carbon, on soil erosion, and on terrestrial acidification that they can use to set targets specifically in the places where they produce commodities or from where they source them. And then finally, our landscape entanglement target is maybe the most important because it connects the in value chain actions that companies take through the no conversion target or working in commodity production landscapes with the landscapes that are material to them. And so our landscape engagement target asks companies to engage as stakeholders with other stakeholders in meaningful stakeholder initiatives in places that are material to them. So they has to be a place where they have a production system or from which they source and they become an active stakeholder in that landscape. I'll switch now to two case studies. The first from Mongolia, Caring Group, the luxury caring group of brands was one of the first companies to set both science-based targets for land and for freshwater. and they selected the lands for landscapes in Mongolia for their landscape engagement target focused on community stewardship and regenerative supply systems and so what we've done over these case studies is to look both at Mongolia's National uh land degradation neutrality targets and to align caring group and good growth companies work on those targets with the the LDN targets that are set at a national scale. And the importance of this is not only that you can demonstrate that a company is contributing to LDN targets at a national scale, but it includes a monitoring and evaluation mechanism that sits outside of government. So these companies working on their SBTN targets will be working on achieving progress, storing organic carbon, improving regenerative grazing practices. And our hope is that through our collaboration with UNCCD's Business for Land program, that these can act as reporting mechanisms for countries as they look to report on their LDN targets. Our second example comes from Pakistan, which looks at collaborative solutions for freshwater resilience. And this is not yet an SBTN target setting, although there are many companies that have set SBTN targets who source from and operate in Pakistan. And so the objective here is to look at Pakistan's land degradation neutrality targets, the version 2.0, which they've just completed, and to understand how working in the Indus River Delta landscape within Pakistan from companies that have set SBTN targets can contribute both to the objectives of LDN targets and to monitoring them for environment ministries and extension services that are tasked with reporting on LDN targets. So what does this mean for you? There are three things that you can carry forward this week. The first is that SBTN is already a mechanism that you can use that provides companies with a credible, flexible and validated way to act on land that is already mapped to LDN indicators. Soil organic carbon is included, soil erosion is included, and these are important things both for SBTN as well as for LDN. We talked on, we saw earlier today on this stage, that there is the request for a bridge between governments and the private sector. SBTN can play a role as that bridge as companies commit to the global goals for nature under SBTN land, freshwater, and oceans, and it will provide spatially explicit corporate data and can be used as evidence for LDN progress. And then finally, it would be fantastic if delegates can use this as a policy signal. We know that companies respond to policy signals. We've seen this over and over. National support for both disclosure and target setting from companies in the places that you represent would be massive in allowing us to be able to accelerate the progress of companies in setting validated science-based targets for nature, and achieving LDN at the same time. Again, my name is Craig Beatty from WWF, and I thank you all for your attention today. Have a great COP. Sarah.

Thank you so much, Craig, for that presentation. To bring in the measurement and market lens, please welcome Dr. Amanda Hanson, senior manager for environmental markets and policy at Accounting for Nature.

Thank you, Sarah. I've got good morning here on my paper, but I guess it's good afternoon at this stage. So I wanted to talk about two topics that I think are really relevant for today's session, but also really relevant for COP in general. And that is nature financing and how nature financing relies on us being able to measure nature. And we've heard people speak about bridges, and we really need to also build a bridge between conservation and finance if we want to achieve the U-turn we so desperately need for land degradation. So let's start talking about measurement. There's a persistent myth in the conservation space that nature can't be measured. Ecosystems are complex, there are a lot of different indicators, and there's a lot of different nuances out there. And yes, it's true, nature is complex. It is hard to measure. Neither soil, vegetation, ecosystems, or biodiversity behave like a balance sheet. However, it doesn't mean that it's impossible. We are measuring nature today. We can measure nature at scale. And it's critical if we want to create that bridge between finance and conservation. So why does nature data matter so much? It's because it's not just a nice to have. It is the essential data that governments and businesses need to be able to make informed investment and policy decisions. Without credible data, we can't know and we can't communicate if a project, a piece of policy, or an investment decision is actually delivering real outcomes for nature. Instead, we end up relying on good intentions. But good intentions and activity metrics are not enough if we want to safeguard that what we're putting in place is delivering real outcomes for nature. And so that brings me to my second point, financing. So we've heard from everyone at this stage today that there is a desperate gap in funding for financing to nature conservation and restoration and to halt land degradation. So in order to close that gap, we need to bring conservation and finance into the same room. And to do that, we need to also make sure that they can speak the same language. Right now, we don't speak the same language. Conservation talks in hydrological flows, species list and ecosystem indexes, and business is talking in profit and loss, material risks and impacts. And until those two languages meet, capital will continue sitting on the sideline for conservation. So breaking down that barrier requires quite a simple concept, and that is that we need to dare to quantify nature, not just describe it, not just add it as a nice to have and allude to it in a sustainability report. We need to quantify it in a way that is rigorous enough for a scientist, but also legible enough for an investment committee to make a decision. Environmental accounts, simple condition metrics and verified baselines. These are all things we need to turn nature from a place to an asset that can be invested in. The asset needs to have a measurable condition, a measurable trajectory, which can also create a measurable case for investment. And so this isn't about reducing nature to an item on a balance sheet. It's about giving nature the chance it really needs to compete in a very competitive investment and finance market where everything is decided by numbers. And it can be done. Currently, over 9.5 million hectares of land is measured in Australia under the Accounting for Nature framework. And that means that an area that's close to the size of South Korea or Denmark is currently being measured and we can tell whether land covered by that area is actually improving or if it continues to degrade. That really shows that measurement is possible. It is possible at scale and it's what we desperately need to bridge the gap between financing and conservation. And so what I want to leave you with today is that we don't need to wait for a perfect system to start doing things. We can't let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress because if we do, we'll still be waiting on the sideline when the land we're trying to protect has become fully degraded. Thank you so much for having me today and I hope you have a great rest of the COP.

Thank you so much, Amanda. For our next segment, we have a panel. I will hand over to our colleagues from the Global Reporting Initiative who will moderate a conversation grounded in real corporate disclosure case studies. I call on stage Elodie Chen, Senior Manager Sustainability Standards Global Reporting Initiative, Julie Green, Ola Magri, Business for Land Champion, and Jeffrey Herrick, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Future Finance-- the Future Strategic Framework. Welcome on stage. I will give you my mic.

Well, thank you, Sarah, and welcome. So we've just heard about corporate target setting. And now we would like to look at another part of that data transparency infrastructure, which is corporate sustainability reporting. This session asks us to think about land as an asset class, recognizing that healthy, productive, resilient land protect and generate economic value. It is something that is worth maintaining and investing in. But good decisions about land require good and credible information. So how companies are affecting land, what do they depend on, how are they managing those issues, and importantly, how is this information helping making better investment decisions? And this is where sustainability corporate reporting comes into play. So the Global Reporting Initiative, GRI, is the global standard setter for impact reporting. It helps companies assess and report their impact on the environment, people, the economy, without the most wide use reporting standards globally. So with companies in over 100 countries and representing 62% of market capitalization. And we work with the business for land to explore how the information that company already generate through their sustainability reporting can support sustainable land management, drought resilience, and land degradation neutrality. So as part of this work, we developed two case studies from companies that depend on land. And that's Olam Agri from the agricultural sector and Rio Tinto with the operations from the mining sector. Those are published today, so please check out the UNCCD website to access them. And one important finding from this work is that disclosure is not simply about producing a sustainability report. The reporting process itself support management, drive action, it helps company identify their impact, strengthen their internal data system, inform decision making. And the disclosure made all that information about impacts on land, on climate, on water, on biodiversity, on communities available to others. So those case studies show a lot of example of how investors, lenders, civil society, rating agencies are using that information on impact to assess company's performance. But the next question is how can we make that connection to land-based investment stronger? And how can information about land and land-related impact help us decide where to invest and understand the value of that investment? And to explore that, I'm joined today by Judy Green, Chief Sustainability Officer at Olam Agri, and Jeff Herrick. So you're a man of many talents, but today you join us as an independent scientist and expert on land monitoring and investment decision support. So Julie, let me start right away with you and with a business perspective. Olam Agri depend directly on productive land, healthy soil, reliable water across complex agricultural value chain. So from your experience, how does sustainability impact reporting help Olam Agri manage these issues and support business decision making and resilience?

Thank you, Elodie. So as an agribusiness, last year we moved 45 million tons of products around the world. That's rice, cotton, wheat, soy, so products that really are critical for food systems as well as other industries. So the resilience of our supply chains depends on the resilience of the land and of the people who farm it. Now, we were already, because of this, we were already mapping our supply chains for several years against risks and impact areas like protected areas and forests, biodiversity risk, water stress, using tools like Global Forest Watch, IBAT, and WRI Aqueduct. So what the GRI framework did was to help unveil some cases where there would be gaps in perhaps the policies or our data measurements or the way that we were approaching it. So for example, Because of GRI reporting, we started mapping our factories. We process these goods in some 70 factories around the world. So we started mapping our factories beyond the immediate impacts on the immediate surrounding environment, but looking at where the overlap and the adjacencies and dependencies might be with key biodiversity areas a little bit further out in a 10 kilometer radius up to a 50 kilometer radius, for example. And also coming back to our supply chains, we looked at the GRI indicators and now the evolving SBTN and the UNCCD guidance as well related to land degradation neutrality. And this has helped us to rethink the land use and the soil health metrics that we are using and the parameters that we're using to assess and align with these evolving indicators looking at land cover, at soil organic carbon, at land productivity. And this in turn helps us to prioritize where to invest in, for example, our regenerative agriculture programs in West Africa or South Asia, and also water programs with smallholder farmers in India or Thailand or Vietnam. So reporting doesn't make our land program, But it helps us to improve our internal discipline and the regularity with which we reevaluate these risks and dependencies. It also helps us to identify these gaps in policies and measurement. And it also guides us to align and improve the indicators that we use to measure the land context.

Thank you so much, Julie. I think those are very good and concrete example of how sustainability reporting can be an input as well to decision making and to adaptive management. But of course, if we want to mobilize more investment into sustainable land management, we also need to ask what information investors and public decision makers need to decide where investment should go. So Jeff, let me turn to you for that. You've worked extensively on land monitoring throughout your career, and now you are exploring how land information can support better investment decisions on sustainable land management. So what information and decision support tools do investors and governments need to identify and prioritize investment? And how could corporate impact reporting contribute?

Yeah, thanks very much. I think the first thing we need to do if we're going to view land as an asset is move beyond talking about investments in sustainable land management and start reinforcing the importance of investing in capital appreciation. The idea being that if land is an asset, If it's an asset that's depreciating, we should be able to quantify the appreciation in the productive value of that asset, whether that productive value is, in fact, from an economic perspective, a social perspective, or an environmental perspective. Mongolia has one of the few, in fact, I think the only, rangeland monitoring system that actually does this. Mongolia starts by classifying its land relative-- its rangelands relative to their productive potential, the types and amounts of vegetation that can be produced to support livestock. It then has a very simple five-class system. And they don't call this a degradation class. They call it a recovery class. The point being that it puts the focus on how can we increase the value of land as a productive asset. The UNCCD is now working on an investment targeting tool, toolkit actually, a broader system that is attempting to bring all of the information together in one place that is required to define the potential return on investment from both a cash flow perspective and capital appreciation on the productive economic side, And also for each of those potential investments at any scale, from the farm or watershed to the national scale, what those investments would provide in social and environmental value. If we have that information together in one place, we can now start to have rational conversations about blended finance, about where and when it makes sense for the private sector to invest by themselves, where the public sector needs to step in and where we can bring these together. Obviously, nearly all the information that we need for the investment decision, we also need to look at impacts, which brings us together.

Thank you, Jeff. And I think that you made it really, really useful to understand also how sustainability information help us look at both sides of the investment equation, right? The risk to the investment, but also the greater value that investment can generate. So, Judy, let me get back to you and also understand to have a bit of discussions about what may be missing from that information chain if we want to have more information and better support land-based investment. What information do you see from your experience investor actually using and asking for and how does that influence conversation about investments or capital allocation?

Yeah, over the past several years, I've had a lot of opportunities to respond to questions from investors and lenders. And there's been only a little evolution, I would say, in the past few years. A few years ago, it was more focused on forests. That's still there. Now, the number one focus has been carbon footprint. Do you know it? Do you measure it? Are you doing something about it? Secondly, there's a question around traceability and responsible sourcing. So that links a bit back to forests typically. And then thirdly, there's our understanding of sourcing areas that may have or factories and mills, for example, that we source from that may have human rights risks. What I don't see is much focus on actually land, land quality and land health. And this to me is it's a bit bizarre because it is so it's so important. You know, when you look at how land underpins agriculture and food systems and many other industries and parts of our economy and also how fast it is degrading, this is a critical area that I think investors and lenders should be looking at, and they should be looking at it not just to mitigate or to avoid the risk and maybe avoid investing in those areas, but seeing how can they proactively invest in the opportunities to restore.

Thank you. And I think that's a perfect segue to you, Jeff. Very briefly, Do you see, or is there an opportunity to provide clearer signals about the approaches we want companies to use when making strategic decisions about land use and land-based investment?

Absolutely, and I think this concept of the toolkit, which will be further developed and discussed at 6:00 PM in an event in Met22, soliciting your input into this, I think is in fact, and you used the word opportunity. an opportunity to come together to build something that will provide everyone the information that they need in order to address the factors that will actually lead us to more investments in land, to more investments in increasing the value of land as an asset.

Great, thank you very much. And maybe in 30 seconds, do you see a role as well for better public-private collaborations, particularly where, you know, this land investment can generate greater value?

So collaborations. Yeah, collaborations. Yeah, absolutely. So every time I've shown this figure to people, they look at it and they say, oh my gosh, that's just too much. Or they say, oh, we're doing that. And then after we talk a little bit more, they realize, no, actually we're not doing that. And so in order to develop something like this, it's going to require tremendous flexibility of different institutions to share their data, to share their knowledge, and to come together to actually build something that will work for everyone. As you saw in the figure, there are also these two side pieces. There will be proprietary tools as well, and the hope is that those proprietary tools will, in fact, be able to interact with this in a relatively seamless way. So new types of collaboration for new answers.

Perfect. Thank you very much. And I think what I take from that conversation, Dan, is that we already have a lot of information from companies through corporate disclosures. We also have land monitoring and other tools that helps as well understand values of land-based investment. But there's a lot more opportunities to connect the two pieces much better. As you know, that COP also look at mobilizing private investments and public and private partnerships, I think it's also good to keep in mind that that information infrastructure matters too. We need to think about what information we need, what are the enabling conditions to direct capital towards sustainable land outcomes. And critically, that means that we need to understand both the corporate impacts alongside financial and business risks. So thank you very much, Julie and Jeff. Back to you.

Thank you so much, Elodie, Julie, Jeffrey. And this conversation is so actual because our parties are currently discussing all those matters during the negotiations in the contact groups. And by the end of the week, we hope to have new decisions on private sector engagement. To close this session, I'm very pleased to welcome Catherine Chevauchet, director for nature at Veolia. She will be presenting and sharing the experience of more than 40 French companies on land use. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's really a pleasure to be with you today to share what we did with all different French companies, what we already did and what we want to do to preserve and to restore ecosystems and especially soil and land. and so I am there on behalf of this association for environment regarding with more than 60 companies in France and we will publish very soon by the end of September beginning of October this publication soil and land in a changing world why do we see that it's important for us to publish this kind of documentation it's because businesses, we care about soil, we care about land, because it's a question of continuity of service for us. It's a question of how our supply chain are resilient or not. Uh how we can still have supplies even if drought or water scarcity is there. And it's maybe not a new question for us but still we need to reinforce our awareness regarding that and to consider soil and land maybe not as an asset as we said but more like a living ecosystem that we have to preserve. So within this publication, you will find more than 40 examples of businesses and how they act to preserve and to go on with restoration of ecosystems and land and soil. And I take only four for today, one regarding the tire production with the company called Michelin. And they commit 10 years ago to reach zero deforestation and they implement some actions in Indonesia for instance to work with small farmers to change the practices and to go on with sustainable practices and to preserve soil. Energy also power production hydro power production. So for hydro power production, we need sustainable soil, we need water in soil to be able to have this continuity of service and there again to work with farmers to push regeneration, biodiversity regeneration in agro-economic systems. And yes, I did not speak about the luxury, but we spoke about that already this morning. And for us, Veolia, as a water waste and energy management company, we try to integrate as best as possible nature-based solution within our cycle water before drinking plant production, for instance, dipping water plant production by preserving reservoir and by working with people, farmers also. And we do also nature-based solutions after the wastewater treatment plant, for instance in Spain with the production of rice. So what I want like to you to know from us, from the business side, as a key way, key takeaway message is that we need to rethink our land use, the way we use the land. We have to rethink the way we consider the value chain and the value networks on value chain to be able to better master the supply. and we need also to reconsider how we share the value also along a value chain so that's why uh that's what you will uh find in this publication and so uh you have also there uh the executive summary if you scan this uh QR code thank you very much on behalf of French Association for Environment

Thank you so much, Katrin. And this showcase that Business for Land is not just an initiative from parties. It is now adopted by more than 450 companies all over the world in actually 56 countries. So thank you so much for all for joining this initiative. And this is the end of this segment. We will now go from land as an asset class to land as a to de-risking at scale the investment for the land. So we'll, so thank you very much. And we show now a video actually about inspiring initiative led by the government of Mongolia. Thank you.

The world's finest wines come from places like Bordeaux, where the soil, the climate, and all time give rise to grapes found nowhere else on earth. and cashmere are much the same. It is Mongolia's land, its climate, and its pristine terrain that have shaped the fibers unlike any other in the world. Mongolian cashmere is sought after for good reason. The country's hardy goats produce a thicker, more durable fiber, an adaptation to some of the harshest rangelands on Earth. Here, unlike almost anywhere else, livestock roam freely across the vast steppes and jagged Khangai Mountains. It is this freedom and this harshness that give Mumble Cashmere its exceptional character. Fine, warm, and silky to the touch. Just as the wines of Bordeaux cannot be replicated, neither can Mumble Cashmere. It is a product of a land and of a nomadic way of life. Today, people around the world is turning away from mass-produced chemical food, synthetic clothing. Consumers want garments that last, but also garments that are natural, safe, and that doesn't hurt materials that are biodegradable. Mongolia offers the world a solution that nature itself has already perfected. Wool, cashmere, and leather gathered from a free-range lifestyle. Yet too few people around the world know the story of Mongolian cashmere. There were once challenges, times when limited technology made it hard to produce garments that would hold together. And year after year, the wool brands have raised their standards and crafted products of quality that now supply some of the world's most recognizable fashion houses. Mongolian producers understand the value of what they hold, and the nation is growing more ambitious to add value to its own national resources, to manufacture world-class finished goods and to bring them to global markets. Driving this transformation is the White Gold National Movement, initiated by President of Mongolia, Ukhueleer. The movement accelerates the journey of Mongolian raw materials from herders' doorsteps to the global marketplace and into the hands consumers around the world. From 2024 to 2028, the movement is built on four strategic goals. First, expanding processing capacity. This means investing in facilities, advanced technology, innovation, with policies supporting for value added and finished products. Second, protecting rangelands and soil. Shifting the focus from number of animals to quality of what they produce. By raising value of each fiber, the movement pressure on the land, giving rangelands the chance to recover and regenerate. Reducing the impact of climate change. In recent years, nomadic pastoralism has faced a range of challenges: climate change, soil degradation, improper land use, mainly from cars making impromptu paths through pastureland, market forces, and the difficulty of reaching social services. To meet these challenges, Mongolia is implementing policies to ensure food security, the likes of climate-adapted livestock systems and uplifting the process of animal-derived raw goods. By introducing sustainable rangeland management, the country aims to increase sequestration of greenhouse gases. Working in tandem with the billions of trees naturally moving, this effort will play a vital role in maintaining the health of ecosystems. Promoting the consumption of eco-friendly, healthy goods. Expanding the use of natural, chemical-free products will protect the health of the growers and consumers alike. while raising incomes of herders and workers at the heart of the industry. So what real value will the White Gold National Movement create? It promises riches far beyond exports and economics. At its heart, the movement connects Mongolia's thousand-year nomadic civilization, a life lived in harmony with nature, to principles of modern sustainable development. It is a bridge between heritage and future, transforming the value created at the herders' doorsteps into world-class products ready to market across the world. And in the bigger picture, it marks a turning point in Bolivia moving from a supplier of raw materials to a producer of finished goods, a nation claiming a greater share of the value drawn from its own land, and creating lasting opportunity for its people and the generations still to come.

The wonderful White Gold Initiative. So, Your Excellencies, esteemed guests, ladies and gentlemen, welcome, or for some of you, welcome back. This morning, during the opening session of the Business for Land Forum, we set the stage. We heard about the scale of the financing gap, and we began making the case for land as an investable asset. Now comes the difficult part. How do we actually make the investment happen? Because capital alone, as we all know, is not the only issue. Investors need projects they can invest in. Businesses need risks they can price. Governments need mechanisms capable of taking promising ideas and turning them into investable propositions. So for the next two hours, we are going to move from the why to the how. How do we de-risk investment? How do we create a pipeline of investable projects? How do we use insurance, blended finance, technology and public-private partnerships to bring capital in? And ultimately, the big question here is the following: How do we scale? So from Mongolia's land economy, we're now going to turn our attention immediately to the financing architecture needed to support transformation at scale. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Roland Reiland, who is ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to China and Mongolia for opening remarks on innovative finance. Roland, please.

Thank you very much, Charlotte. Ladies and gentlemen, are there any ministers left? No, but there are some ambassador colleagues left. Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, it's a great pleasure to be here. It's a great pleasure to be back here. And I'm going to tell you why soon. I was once, a couple of years ago, the national focal point for this convention. And my last COP was the one, the COP number 13 in Ordos, China in 2017. where we came up with the first solution to the questions that you've just raised, Charlotte. But before starting, let me first of all commend the Secretariat of the Convention and all of you being here giving up your lunch break. I have been participating in or listening to the previous session and as we have difficulties in moving forward negotiations up there, here we can see and hear and witness concrete examples of how to move forward, of how to measure land appreciation and the increase of land productivity, for instance, in the previous session, very interesting. And then, of course, moving on to finance. So in Luxembourg, what we are doing, we are trying to leverage the experience of our financial sector. We started off over 20 years ago with setting up microfinance investment funds. So microfinance dedicated in investing into microfinance institutions in the global south. We have moved on ever since. I've just mentioned my last appearance at COP13. And at that precise COP in Ordos, China in 2017, we launched, I think, the first investment fund, privately managed investment fund, investing into the restoration and rehabilitation of degraded land. It was kind of a risk at the beginning, it was something new, but the fund, which is managed by a French private asset manager, the fund managed to gather over 200 million US dollars and has made very important investments over the last couple of years in sustainable agriculture from rehabilitated land, from restorated land in the global south. So it shows that it works. Why does it work? Because we found an interesting equation of getting public funds together with private investments in a sort of blended architecture in which the public funds would take over the highest risks of the fund. So the first loss, so-called, and deleveraging overall, reducing overall the risks of private investors joining the fund. And I am happy to inform you that following this first success of the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund, We will be presenting at this COP a new fund together with the secretariat of the convention in which we focus more on drought resilience building again for affected country parties in the global south. What is this fund going to do? This fund is going to invest primarily into the protection of land, into water resources, sustainable irrigation systems, water, I'm sorry, I'm over a bit long, cleaning of water and using this water again into agricultural and pastoralist systems. And I would like, given that I don't have more time, I would like to invite you all 30 at this very place, at this location, where we will officially present this new investment fund. So maybe in framing the discussion for the speakers afterwards, I think it is very important to look at the incentives that we can create for private investors in joining such an undertaking. How can we do that? How can we showcase the improvement of land productivity and the appreciation of land in making land an investable investment class or asset class? The other side of the coin is obviously How can we prepare bankable projects? And it's probably, for those of you who are involved in this, it's probably no news if I'm telling you that each of these funds is always accompanied by a technical assistance facility in order to help project carriers, project builders to come up with bankable project that would satisfy the criteria in order to pass the investment board of the respective fund. I am available for more questions later on, and I look very much forward to the discussion, and I look forward to welcoming you tomorrow at the presentation event of the Drought Resilience Investment Facility. Thank you very much.

Many thanks, Ambassador, and congratulations on the launch of this very innovative and interesting fund indeed. So we've just heard about finance, but ultimately finance has to translate into something tangible, hectares restored, communities strengthened, and businesses that work. So for our first conversation, I am joined by four leaders approaching that challenge from government, from agribusiness, consumer goods and community based conservation. So please join me in welcoming her Excellency Inna Machuli Unite, who's ambassador of the European Union to Mongolia, and a warm round of applause, please, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Ambassador. Yes, anywhere. We will also be joined by Helmi Aboulais, who's CEO of Sekem. Chul Young Bae, who's team lead for corporate social responsibility at Yuhuan Kimberly, welcome. And Hoseful Tony, who's stakeholder engagement manager for the Gashaka Gumti National Park Forest Carbon Project in Nigeria. Please come and join us. So welcome to all of you. I'd like to come to each of you with one question to start with, and then we'll finish with a very quick fire round. So Ambassador, to start with, let's begin at the systemic level. We're meeting today in a world where around 40% of land is degraded, while land degradation and drought are estimated to cost the global economy $878 billion every year. So let me ask you very directly, what is the EU proposing to do about it? And in particular, how can policy and public finance help de-risk the private investment we need?

Thank you very much. And of course, the figures you mentioned are impressive. I wanted to concentrate on dryland speaking now today with you on this panel. And I also wanted to add some figures to the figures you mentioned already. We all need to remember that 44% of world's croplands are in drylands, and they hold also 50% of the livestock globally, and one out of three persons live in this area. I think we keep forgetting it. And unfortunately, drylands were for quite long time forgotten. And we could do a lot about this land and it's good that we are talking about it because we know also, so besides food, you also get some commodities that are very important for like pharmaceutical, for cosmetics, and also for food industry like frankincense, gum arabic, shea and cashmere that Mongolia knows very well, cotton, sesame, moringa, they could find also could be found only in this area. So if it disappears, we part of our economy will be lost. So keeping it in mind also European Union is thinking how to assist with investment in those businesses that try to get to drylands and how to actually restore the drylands. And we have a number of the financial tools in our possession because we have our grants, we have our blending mechanisms, we also have our guarantees. And because of that, we try to build new programs. And just recently, a little bit early on in the ministerial, I launched a new program of the European Union of 20 million euros, which is called Thrive Lands. And this program is not only, you know, for public sector, because it's very relevant to the today's topic that businesses should be our partners there. It will be implemented by by the Landscape Alliance. And this program is very much important for building new alliances. And we invite, as we define in our global gateway strategies for Asia as well, because here we speak about Asia, Asia Pacific, that businesses need to come and work together with us to make dryland sustainable. And if you want to learn more about the program, I would invite everyone to come on the 26th of August from 3:00 to 4:30 at MET01 and to participate in our workshop where we will speak more concretely about what we plan in this particular program.

Sorry, is my microphone working? It is fantastic. Ambassador, many thanks and thank you for the invitation to take part in this workshop too. I'm now going to turn to Helmi because Helmi, Sikem is literally the embodiment of the title of this session because your father began back in 1977 with a stretch of Egyptian desert and today Sekem spans farming, food, textiles, medicine, healthcare, education, am I forgetting something here? But crucially it's a business, it's not a charity and that's what's really interesting about it. So what actually did you have to de-risk in order to reclaim desert to a scalable commercial model? How did you do it?

Yeah, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to present this case, which indeed started in the desert from nothing 50 years ago. And today there are 20,000 acres of desert restored, reclaimed, regenerated out of sand. We have living soils. And this shows that living soils is a wonderful platform for economic development. Living soils can produce all kinds of crops, and we are indeed producing all kinds of crops for Egypt, for the local market. And our products are in every single household in Egypt, via 50,000 supermarkets, 35,000 pharmacies, and have created 3,000 jobs for food, pharmaceuticals, and garment production. And the profits have been reinvested into schools, a university, and hospitals, community development projects, and so on. Now, what is this in relation to the seven million farmers of Egypt, to the seven million acres of Egypt? It's still small. So five years ago, we decided we want to upscale. We want to make this model available to all the farmers in Egypt, and this is when we then indeed started to look how can we upscale the model. And it was focusing on ecosystem services which made it possible. So an organic farmer is providing healthy and organic food, but at the same time, and he's not valued for this, he's providing ecosystem services, less water consumption, CO2 in his soil and his trees, less energy and so on and so on. So putting all this together, we have created our own economy of love standard, including into the standard ecosystem services, which today are used to compensate the farmers, our real climate heroes in Egypt for their ecosystem services. And with this compensation, they are able to sell their organic products in the local market for the conventional price. So we are not in this niche of wealthy people, no, we are selling into the villages organic products for every consumer in Egypt. Over the last three years, we reached 40,000 farmers. Over the next three, four years, we want to reach 250,000 farmers, reaching one and a half million acres, which would be 20% of Egypt's agricultural land. And this would make it system relevant. We believe that using ecosystem services to compensate farmers go from conventional to organic farming, provide healthy food, having better livelihoods, sequester millions of tons of CO2 in their soils and trees, improve biodiversity, water holding capacity of their soils and so on, is a scalable model which would help all of us to go to this one and a half billion hectares of land restored in the next three, four years. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Helmi. A very impressive example of how desert regeneration can be profitable. We have another company or another gentleman here who is also proof that you can make changes one hectare at a time. Mr. Bay, your company has been planting trees here in Mongolia since 2003. And since you started, you have planted more than 13 million across roughly 3,250 hectares. So that's more than two decades of sustained corporate commitment to land outside your own home market. So for companies out there wondering whether that kind of patience can possibly make business sense, how did you make that commitment? And after 23 years, what have you actually delivered besides goodwill?

Thank you for inviting me. I actually, when we think about risking the long term investment, we, I think we do not really too much to think about risk. Because you know, if, to be honest, the private sector, if we think about long term perspective and then risk itself, we're not going to start it. So we focus on the visions that we have. We do have visions and purpose. We have the visions like we act for life, health and planet, the planet. And also we have a purpose. Actually, we have the sister company, the Kimberley Club, which has the same purpose, care for, better care for better world. So we focus on two things, our purpose and the visions. The only difference is the consistency. Most of the companies really wanted to do it exactly the same way, but same approach, but consistency is somewhat different. As you said, that's number one solutions, I think. The second is the long term commitment. When you think about the forest, it isn't, you know, to create one year or two years, at least a decade. That's the units that we have to expect. So when we think about restorations or reforestation, we only think about the decades of the long-term perspective. That's the realistic approach, I believe. The second one is that we really need multi-sectoral governance. Like from the start of our campaign, we worked together with the government, especially in Mongolia, SPA, and also the Korean NGO, because we are, you know, business in the Korea. So the peaceful rest and also expert and the academia or, you know, this kind of the multi-sectoral governance always minimize the risk that we may face once we, because, you know, once we, you know, focus on one items by one company, we easily abandon. But multi-sectoral governance, you know, to protect those decisions, right? So that's the another key things that we learned from the experience. And actually in Korea, as you said, we started that project in 2003 in Mongolia, but in Korea, we had that project, you know, based on the forest restoration. We called it in Korea, in English, Keep Korea Korean Campaign, which started 1984, So from our experience, we learned that long term perspective will make a big difference. We focused on not the number, we focus on the changes we may face. So these are the factors that these are the reasons we could make. And finally, a lot of people say that you're not going to make a business reserved or business value, but that's not true though. We can with this activities, we got trust with our consumers. So we got we can make environmental values Mongolia and also we got the social values for Mongolian community. Also we got the business values in Korean consumers. So long term perspective and consistency makes changes. That's what we learned. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bay. It's a big ask for the business sector to maybe switch from a logic of short-term profit to a long-term vision of consistency, which will bring in resilience, of course. Now, Horsfall, Tony, we've talked about regenerative business models and long-term corporate commitments, but of course, none of this will work if we don't actually include and if it doesn't benefit the people who live on the land and have a stake in it. And that's exactly what you're doing with the Gashaka Gumti project, which covers an extraordinary landscape, Nigeria's largest national park, and you are targeting about 12 million tons of CO2 equivalent removals. whilst engaging 150,000 people in surrounding communities. So how do you make local communities partners in those big projects?

Okay, thank you very much. For us, we've approached de-risking by mainly putting these communities at the centre of our restoration and conservation efforts. by making sure that it makes economic sense to them and improves their benefits and livelihoods. And that's why even in our project design, 60% of profits from sales of carbon credits will be invested back into these communities. What we have noticed from our experience in Gashaka is once communities see a leap from land restoration to restoration of their livelihoods, it boosts their confidence, it inspires them, it builds trust, they take ownership and becomes the safeguard of the project. And I think we can replicate this model by two things quickly. Number one, more public-private partnerships like the type Africa Nature Investors Foundation, which is a biodiversity conservation NGO, has with the National Park Service of Nigeria, a federal government parastatal under the Ministry of Environment. and they both have a 30-year renewable partnership agreement to co-manage the landscape. So that's why this model is working. We need replication of those. And secondly, quickly, we will need more beyond good intentions. We will need patient partnerships and financing mechanisms that can finance early stage projects and bridge the gap between restoration efforts of today and getting a reward or return tomorrow. And we thank FSD Africa, SKIP grants that have supported Geshaka to upscale to this level. We need more of that because restoration projects scale when communities and developers have or secure pre-financing or off-take agreements to be able to kind of like reinvest and scale. And that's the only way conservation can move from a pilot to a viable asset class once we have this pre-financing secured or investments. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Wolfel, Tony. Some very interesting pointers here, and a key word, patience. Patience in building those partnerships which are essential to bring on change. Sadly, we're running out of time. I think time is the most precious currency here at COP17. So I'd like to challenge our distinguished panelists to close this conversation, to maybe share one sentence with us to address the following question. What would allow you to de-risk and scale faster over the next, let's say, 12 months? Ambassador, would you like to start?

I think that we need to be concrete. So my proposal would be that tell us when and under which conditions you want to invest into sustainable drylands management or management of the drylands commodities. And then let's look together which European tools, financial tools like the risk king or technical assistant could be the best fit for that.

Thank you, Helmi.

I believe it would help if ecosystem services would be acknowledged more by investors, development partners and banks as a monetized value which should get into the economic balance sheet, could get into the economic viability of a project. And so we need functioning markets for ecosystem services, carbon credits and so on to make it possible to upscale rapidly with many, many more farmers and initiatives like the ones in Africa quickly.

Thank you. Chul Young Bae in one sentence.

It's really difficult questions to us because I'm not sure about the real solutions. But from our experience, I always told you several times, the belief is really important to make it happen. And without it, it's not easy. And personally believe that actually this private sectors it's not easy to participate. So without philosophy or the strong mindset, it doesn't really happen. So that is the things that we may need.

Thank you for that. Horsefall Tony.

Yes, mine I'll call for more efficient flow of finance into impactful projects. That's what makes communities to come all out. That's what makes developers to scale. Thank you.

Well, thank you. And many thanks to all our wonderful speakers here for sharing such practical and pragmatic recommendations and amazing examples of how you can lead change one hectare at a time. Let's have a big round of applause, please, for our guests. Thank you. And next, to bring in an Asian perspective on financing forests and land cooperation, please welcome Dr. Shungo Park, who is Executive Director of AFoCo, the Asian Forest Cooperation Organization. Thank you. Can we have a warm round of applause, please, for our next speaker?

Thank you, moderator. I am Jung Ho Park. It is a great honor because I was working for Korean government in 2011, captain of UNCCD was in charge of me because I was director general in charge of carbon 10 in Changwon. So after I retired from government, I was working for Asia Forest Cooperation Organization. So thank you very much for moderator for giving me opportunity to introduce Afoco and our activities. Distinguished leaders, partners, colleagues, it is a privilege to join you today on behalf of Asia Forest Cooperation Organization, Afoco, I'd like to extend a sincere appreciation to B4L and the UNCC Secretariat for the invitation to speak in this session. It is a great pleasure to join you today and share regional perspective on financing forest and land restoration in Asia. At AFoCO, Asia Forest Cooperation Organization, we work across our 15 member countries to turn restoration ambition into action on the ground. And from our experience, one message is clear, restoration cannot be scaled by public fund alone. We need to connect public finance, climate finance, and private capital. After I become the executive director of POKO Secretariat four years ago, I tried to diversify funding source. So firstly, I contacted many Korean big company. And then I contacted many global engager who had interest in environment, forest and so on. The mostly they are having interest in forest carbon. not usual ODA project, not usual grant project. So therefore, I would like to focus on forest carbon project to diversify funding source. This is particularly important in Asia where countries have a strong restoration ambition, but many projects are still too small. to early stage and to risk to attract commercial investment. At AFoCo, we are trying to bridge this gap in practical way. One example is forest carbon. We are developing and implementing forest carbon project, particularly through afforestation and restoration in countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia. Through our collaboration with Rabobank in Netherlands, ACON program, we are also exploring how carbon finance can support restoration while generating tangible benefit for small stakeholders farmers. But carbon finance is only one part of solution. Across the Asian region, our focus is working with international financial institution and the development partner including Asian Development Bank and the European Bank of Construction and Development and the World Bank, while also expanding partnership with diverse range of corporate partners, interest in forest restoration, carbon, biodiversity and natural based solution. Our role as a regional organization is to help bring these actors together government that define national priorities, financial institution that can provide capital, business that bring investment and innovation, and the local partners that turn finance into hectare restored on the ground. AFOCO is an intergovernmental organization. Our focal point is government. Therefore, AFoCo has a very strong point because most of forest related carbon project government role is very important in terms of policy and regulation. Without government regulation and policy, we cannot plan, implement, evaluate any carbon project. Sometimes, as you may know, our country except Brunei, our 13 member country are least developed country and developing country. As you know, there are so many challenges to plan and implement forest carbon project. Therefore, intergovernmental organization has a very crucial, crucial in terms of solve very challenge while planning and implementing those kind of challenge and barrier. Fortunately, with our successful story of agroforestry project in Kyrgyzstan, we already have benefit sharing with the carbon value to the local engaged and farmer. With this successful story, right now the many global engager, not only the international organization, some institute, but also private sector, we are planning and implementing many projects. Okay, I have one minute. Don't worry about that. So therefore, only this year, AFACO also became an accredited entity of the Green Climate Fund. This gives us another important tool to bridge public and private finance. Our ambition is to use GCF and other public sources or the Catholic capital to prepare bankable project, reduce early stage risks, and ultimately mobilize a large flow of private investment into forest and land restoration. For us, therefore, the question is not only simple how to find more funding for restoration, it is how we build financing ecosystem in which different source of capital can work together. This is where regional cooperation can make a real difference by connecting countries financial institutes and businesses. We can aggregate opportunities, share risk and experience, and develop restoration models that can be replicated and scaled across borders. Our focus is ready to serve as the bridge connecting forest, finance, and partnership, and turning regional ambition into measurable action on the ground. Thank you.

So, thank you. We keep using the word finance, but what kind of finance? Because private capital still accounts for only a fraction of what's needed to tackle land degradation. And the barriers are familiar, perceived risk, long-term horizons, insufficient pipelines of investment-ready projects, and sometimes simply a lack of instruments capable of matching the risk. So let's talk about creative capital next. How do we use blended finance, insurance, revenue generating business models and national investment platforms to make land investable at scale? To discuss it, I am delighted to welcome Carrie Vigors-Toll, who's water scarcity and resilience lead at the Nature Conservancy. Please come and join me on stage here. Thank you. Chenchen Yao, who's head of ESG at JinkoSolar. Migwan Solana, who's team lead for the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility at UNDP. And Javkhlan Bayasagkhan, who's advisor to the president of Mongolia for project coordination and civil society policy. Let's give them a big round of applause, please. So very warm welcome to all of you. Carrie, I'm gonna start with you here because the Nature Conservancy is launching its financing for land restoration playbook right here today, bringing together real world financing mechanisms for drought resilience, rangelands and restoration. Across those examples, can you tell us what distinguishes a restoration project that is environmentally compelling to one that Private capital could be interested.

Yes, thank you so much. It's great to be here. And we're really excited to launch this new playbook on innovative financing for land restoration and drought resilience alongside UNCCD and many other partners, including GIZ, Global Water Partnership, ILRI, Mongolian Nature's Legacy Fund, and Enduring Earth. And we will be launching this today at our pavilion, the TNC pavilion in the blue zone at six o'clock, so please come and hear more about it then. And I think what we found in our work and in gathering these stories from the Nature Conservancy, but also all of these other partners, is that really that investing in nature and people can be financially viable at scale. And really, and what's exciting about that is not only is it financially viable, but that we can also deliver on these other benefits, including improving biodiversity, strengthening water systems, advancing climate mitigation and adaptation, and supporting local communities through stronger livelihoods. expanding their access to finance and technical support and more inclusive governance. And I think to your question around, you know, what makes this viable, there are some really great examples of what this actually looks like on the ground in the playbook. And I think some of the things that we look across those cases, and we've heard this before from other speakers, is that the blended finance, the public-private blended finance makes these cases for investment for private investors more attractive because we're able to reduce the risk for that private investment with that blended finance. I think also what we're seeing, although there are some common archetypes across the cases, it's really important to identify the value opportunity in each context. with the understanding of the policy context and how you can create these investment mechanisms that are sustainable over time. And so I really ask, request that you come and join us today at six o'clock, and we're happy to share more of stories. And I can tell you a couple of those stories if we have time right now about some of those specific mechanisms that we're engaged in in Mongolia and in many other places around the world where we work.

Sadly, I'm afraid we're going to run out of time for stories, but I'm sure they're very compelling. Thank you very much for that. I'd like to switch to Chen Chen now because China gives us a fascinating example through PV plus sand control. That's using solar infrastructure not only to generate electricity, but also to reduce evaporation and wind erosion and enable vegetation and economic activity on degraded land. The electricity revenue effectively helps pay for restoration, which is fascinating. So what does this model teach us about turning degraded land into a revenue generating asset? And can we replicate it outside China? How?

I have to say because I boil down some keywords from the last several sections. I heard about charities, philanthropy, support, SunTrust. I have to say very times, you know, eco restoration stand apart from the commercial returns, you know, I guess this PV modules, second two models, you know, is try to seek to bridge the gap. In China, Okay, in China, for Jinko, we already deployed over 20 gigawatts solar panels in that region among this project. And here I list three enabler. The first, I guess, like Charlotte mentioned, is like revenue stacking. This is not simply the model, it's not just simply like panel on sand. It's a ecosystem, panel generate powers. the shades on the surface, like reduce the evaporation and enabling like vegetation underneath. So it's kind of multi-revenue streams enable our investor to give them confidence. The second will be the, today we're talking about technology. Jinkos panels engineering with for like extreme high UVs, like thermal, like engineering load. This year we also launched the anti-dust type of modules just designed for the desert regions. So for this kind of hardware, special design for these regions give the investor operation risk de-risk. The third, I guess, is the most important thing is the policy de-risk. In China, those kind of large, we call the large base program, coordinates the energy, water, agriculture authority under one national strategies. So like the land are state owned, the leases are standardized, ultra high voltage lines are planned in advance. Those kind of institutional coherence give investor confidence. So this model, I have to say, is not just only functioning in China. it works, it did troubles, you know, megawatt, gigawatt projects has been deployed among, for instance, like Saudi, across Middle East, but we also see some regions did hit the wars. I give you three, I guess, challenge. The first year is the land complexities, the tenure complexity. In some regions, dry regions like Sahara Africa, Central Asia, the traditional and share the land right create legal ambiguity. If you do, cannot, capital cannot price the products, it cannot secure. The second probably will be, I guess the second, the first is the price, the second I guess probably is the policy as well, the capital as well, you know. I give you examples. the cost of debt for climate related projects in Europe is 2.8 percentage, for Africa is 20 percentage. If you face that high of the cost of the capital, how can you survive with this kind of model? The last, yes, the policy wants, I guess we need to, that is why everyone come here in COP17 under the business for land, we work together. Jinko bring the technology, bring experience and the multilateral partners work together to find, unlock the possibilities. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Chenchen. Very, well, very impressive examples here. I'd like now to speak to you, Miguel Solana, because when we think of insurance, normally we think of insurance as something we use when something goes wrong. Okay. So I'd like you maybe to tell us how we can make it a little bit more ambitious and use it to unlock investment in more resilient agriculture and land management before something wrong happens, before the shock occurs.

Thank you for the question. In this case, I would say, yeah, insurance, first of all, helps us to cope when something goes wrong.

But then it has a behavioral.

Element that I think is, if you're thinking about a smallholder farmer, an MSME in rural.

Areas, and they had to invest around 80% of their assets, of their capital, into adopting new practices, would you do it?

If something goes wrong and you're gonna lose everything.

And this is this behavioral element of insurance allowing you to take this step, to take this risks forward. And this is around people understanding how they are protected and how this protection to work for them.

And third one is around the thing around how insurance can unlock financing portfolios. regarding land management and restoration.

And we can see that.

In many cases, private financial institutions are sensing that many of these projects are extremely risky.

And that they could go wrong.

And therefore, if we help them to manage the risk regarding this, they will be in a better.

Position to start allocating resources.

On the other element, we can also be thinking that the pricing currently, it's like a compounding element of things.

And usually you would think that the project is risky, therefore the lending.

Rates need to be higher.

And then if we want insurance, we need to make it even higher and so on.

So therefore, when we can work with regulators, financial insurance regulators to start bringing this cost.

Down, then we can really drive more affordable. I mean, first of all, improve the risk appetite of financial institutions.

And on the other end, we can really be thinking about decreasing the lending rates that.

Farmers and institutions are paying behind this financing for this kind of.

Solutions.

Very interesting insights here. Thank you very much for that, Miguel. Hafalal now Mongolia, our host here for COP17, is launching the National Green Lab, and that brings government, business, conservation, and finance together to turn restoration opportunities into investment-ready projects. But pasturelands and ecosystem services don't look like conventional infrastructure, even though, and we mentioned it this morning, they are infrastructure. Nature is infrastructure. So from the president's office perspective, what does investment ready concretely look like?

Thank you. And it's a very observation I've said on every side of the table with multinational institutions, private sector, and parliament. And if there's one lesson that I've learned from that experience is that Mongolia never lacked any good ideas or good policy intent. What we are really lacking is the translation layer, something that turns our ambition, national ambition, into a project that investors can actually commit to. That's precisely the national green lab is about to close. Investors don't invest in land or livestock as an idea. Investors invest in secured cash flows, secured pipelines and governance they can trust. So when the office of the president of Mongolia together with the Business Council of Mongolia and Mongolia's Natural Legacy Foundation fund, the starting question wasn't how do we build another platform? The question was why do we have so much land, so much livestock, and so much renewable energy potential, and so little of it is structured in a way that capital actually recognizes? So Green Lab exists to do that, to close that gap, converting natural and pastoral assets into bankable and investable projects, whether that's a ranchland restoration or carbon finance or green infrastructure tied directly into the livestock. So that's exactly where it connects to the White Gold National Movement initiated by the President of Mongolia, Okhnaa Khurzhuuk. White Gold has been doing essential work on the supply side of the herding economy. quality standards, traceability, standardization and market access, so which we are helping Mongolian cashmere and livestock driven products to compete globally. So the Green Lab is the financing counterpart to that effort and where White Gold builds the value chain. So Green Lab builds the capital architecture around it, the investment instrument. So it means pulling small herder assets into scalable investable asset. So it means building to share the risk, reducing the risk for the cooperatives and herders and also reducing the risk for the ranchland restoration projects. So that's what opens the door for real financing and at home and abroad. So neither really works without the other. You can have best cashmere and the value chain in the world, but if there's no bankable structure behind the land and herders who work it, that value never capitalizes. So you can have a real climate finance in Mongolia, which we do have, but without the wide There's no credible pipeline to put that capital into. So you can see on the screen that this green lab is established this year prior to the COP17 and we have received about 135 proposals. projects and we have selected 15 projects and actually today, this morning and in the afternoon, there's a pitching event happening and we already have received a commitment from the EBRD, which I am very happy to announce that three of the projects they will be supporting and the main 15 projects are including into seven different sectors including the sustainable value chain, landscape restoration, soil health, ranchland protection, technology-based solutions, and sustainable resource livelihoods. So basically the, okay, my minutes is run out. So basically the idea is that White Gold National Movement is preparing the groundwork from the herders and cooperatives to the market access and National Green Lab is preparing the kept to make it investable and to capitalize it.

Thank you, Javhelin, and congratulations on this Green Lab initiative. So here, four different speakers coming from a very different perspective, but all offering very creative ways to harness capital to deliver change. Many thanks to all of you for being on stage with us here this afternoon. A big round of applause, please, for our guests here this afternoon. Thank you. Next, ladies and gentlemen, we are delighted to welcome Lorenzo Fatibene of EY, who will share the land manifesto with us. Lorenzo, over to you.

Thanks. What is uninsurable is not bankable, and what is not bankable cannot be deployed. I'm the global sustainable insurance leader at UY and we're working with the UNCCD because we want to change both the equation simultaneously. This is part of a vicious loop to poverty and one of the reason for blended finance fail to scale. Uninsured land, unsecured land, no or limited creditworthiness, which means zero capital. Without that, there is no land restoration, land management, therefore the risk increases and it's a continuous loop. And the reason for that are just structural. Risks are fragmented. There is no standard interpretable mechanism to address them. And as a consequence, each transaction takes a lot of effort. at the individual level and the time to execute from concept to close is so long that possibly the investment opportunity has walked away. Aligned to many of the things I've heard this morning about risk and just now Miguel, we with the UNCCD we want to change this framework. We want to move from insurance as an exposed recovery interventions into embedding insurance ex ante within a risk finance mechanism. And we also want to move from fragmented risk transactions into a more standard replicable protocols. So for that, we looked at more than 40 We looked at the draft insurance to start with. And just for that, there are more than-- we find more than 40 archetypes of insurance conditions. And this is only for the meso layers. So our ambition is to build an open platform to facilitate transactions and deals and embed insurance into capital stock and financial transactions. And now you, this is a call for actions. If you are a corporate, private, development banks, insurer, community, please show the previous slide, engage, get in contact. get in contact through the QR code and have your voice, provide your input. I know what you're thinking, insurance, that's boring. No, please join and I'll guarantee that that can be also fun and particularly useful for all our initiatives. Thanks.

Many thanks, Lorenzo. So we have spent a lot of time today talking about the shortage of finance, but there is another problem which may be as important because sometimes the capital exists, but the investable project doesn't. A restoration project can deliver extraordinary environmental and social outcomes and still fail an investment committee. And because impact is not the same thing as bankability, that will be the topic of our next conversation. Now, before we begin this conversation, I have an important announcement to make on behalf of UNCCD, because we are formally here today launching the Finance Expert Group. That's a standing group of finance and investment practitioners who will work with UNCCD to help turn the commitments we are hearing into an actual pipeline of bankable land and drought resilience projects. Now, for more information on how to get involved, well, you'll have to wait. It will follow through UNCCD after COP17. But for now, let's go back to our important panel question, what actually makes land bankable? And to discuss this, I am delighted to welcome Gloria Womiso, who is head of humanitarian insurance at African Risk Capacity. Ignacio Lorenzo, who's director of technical advisory on biodiversity and climate at CAF, the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. Felipe Ortega Schlingmann, who's head of the bioeconomy division at the European Investment Bank. And Li Shuke, who's general manager and chief expert at Shandong Woke Agriculture Development. Welcome to our panelists. So many thanks to all of you for joining us here this afternoon. I'm going to start with you, Gloria, because we cannot isolate one particular piece of that risk. Where does insurance fit in a financing architecture for land and drought resilience, according to you?

Thank you. I hope you can hear me. Thank you so much and good afternoon everyone. First of all, I think it's important to remind that insurance should not be seen as stand-alone instrument, but instead as a tool that work alongside with other instruments and therefore there is no debate about the importance of insurance fit in within the architecture financing, but more how the insurance can make stronger when it comes to financing overall. So we know that land and water investment can also be exposed to climate and disaster risk. And that's what we try to do at African Risk Capacity. We provide pre-arranged financing through risk transfer using mainly parametric insurance and risk pooling. So government, development bank, donors, or private investors may put capital into restoring degraded land, improving soil health, strengthening water management, or supporting more resilient communities. And because these, they are affected by, but they can still be affected by drought, flood, cyclone, and extreme weather event. So these are exactly the kind of risk that insurance can help manage they are well defined, measurable and uncertain. The uncertainty is very important when it comes to insurance because we cannot insure a risk that is already there and also we cannot predict price of risk that we cannot measure. So once everything is aligned, the risk, the trigger, the financing are defined in advance before the season starts. So once the pre-agreed threshold has been reached, then we make the payment very quickly. at African risk capacity when it comes to drought, who will make the payment within 10 days when it comes to drought, three days when it comes to cyclone. But every risk should not be transferred to the insurance industry. Of course, some are better addressed through other instruments. The initial cost of restoring the related land, major infrastructure needs, and even project preparation, and even so small events that happen too frequently every year or every second year. So for this kind of risk, it's better to use contingent financing, public finance, blended finance, grant. And for us, not about limitation of insurance, but more which instrument should be used for which risk and how together we can be complementary and also how we can reinforce each other. So I think I don't have a lot of time, so that's what I want to share with you today.

Well, thank you. That was very compelling. Thank you for that, Gloria. I'm going to turn to Ignacio next because CAF has a broad toolkit available, you have guarantees, concessional capital, credit lines, results-based finance and combinations of them all. So let me ask you, how do you decide which instruments fit which risk?

Thank you very much and good afternoon, colleagues. First, on the case of land, we of course see first the economic rationality of projects and how the revenues and the actual outputs work and that also relates to the type of instruments we need to choose. And that will be like the first approach in this idea of bankable projects. But I also like to bring to the conversation, this is something that we also have brought up in the last couple of years in terms of our environmental investments and also bankable projects, is that we need to see not only the economic rationality of the program and investments, but also what is the financial structure and the institutional capacity or otherwise. That also relates, for example, in terms of land when we deal with small scale agriculture. We have huge difficulties and barriers. For example, in Latin America, 80% of producers are family farmers. So how do we deal with that in terms of allowing credit to realize when we have actual investments that can happen and can increase revenue in a way that also conserves land? And third is also to see an evolution and a conversation around the financial markets in developing countries. We have different kinds of constraints in terms of regulatory aspects, also securities. And that is also something that we can work with governments in order to achieve that financial landscape to be evolution in a positive way that can allow for this, as an initial comment, the actual economic revenues that can happen can deliver within a financial landscape that is positive and evolving in terms that can also produce and incorporate environmental outputs.

Thank you very much for that Ignacio. Felipe now next. At the EIB you know the infamous valley of death. That's when projects with proven technology are too early for conventional bank lending but too capital intensive for venture capital. So for land positive and bioeconomy projects what does it actually take to get across that valley, come back alive and maybe even thrive?

So thanks. Just to start, there is no single ticket size guarantee or blended finance structure that solves the value of every land positive or bioeconomy project. Do you hear me? Does it work? Okay, yeah. What matters is whether the financing fits the project maturity, the scale and the risk profile. So I would highlight three essential things for projects to materialize, beside the financing of course. First is there must be a credible project. So we are facing many times projects that are not well prepared, that do not have a strong promoter, that try to replicate a non-tested approach, and that most importantly for land positive projects do not have a proven or sizable revenue generating capacity to implement. This is very important because land restoration and environmental value may be clear in many operations and many projects, but still need to become predictable in terms of cash flow and cash flow reliability and size. And this is where policymakers also matter by creating demand through clear taxonomy rules, for example, that help corporates to define their corporate and structure the corporate social responsibility. We have heard this morning many of a very interesting panel on this, but also public procurement rules that may pull demand or payment for ecosystem services that need to be structured and established. with the help of policymakers in order to make credible carbon and nature markets work. The second is aggregation, and I would highlight aggregation. I have noted here in my notes that aggregation of projects, because many of the land positive projects are normally small in size and fragmented. to be able to, for institutions like us to be financing one by one. So it needs some aggregation models through funds, through intermediated lending approaches. So where we, for example, give credit lines with a purpose to commercial banks in the different countries to really reach out to the final operators. But aggregation also matters in terms of donations. This morning I was thinking because there was announcement of several donations by several countries. It's really very fragmented. So maybe collaboration among donors is also important to really make this happen. Third, and this is the most important and relevant to this panel, is that the risk sharing must target the real barrier. So guarantees and blended finance may be very useful to mobilize and bring in private capital. but they should unlock investment, not make weak projects look bankable. So I'm finishing, sorry. There's also limits to the riskings. If revenues are not credible or insufficient, land tenure governance risks are unresolved or safeguards are weak or outcomes cannot be measured, the answer is not simply guarantees. The project first needs to have good preparation, policy support, grants and project action. And in short, This is where EIB Group and other MDBs can help turn promising land restoration projects and bioeconomy ideas into invested pipelines through technical assistance to prepare projects, to help the policy discussion in order to structure payment for ecosystem service markets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Thank you very much, Felipe. Sorry for rushing everyone, but as you all know, we are running behind schedule quite heavily actually. So I need to speed things up here a little bit. But we want to hear from you, Li Shuke, of course, because your model is very different. Shandong Land Development Group is a provincial state-backed platform working scale to turn degraded and saline alkali farmland productive land. So what is it about that model that has enabled it to work at scale? How did you do it?

Thank you so much for having me here. I will be more shortened to tell us more than. And as an provincial investment and financial platform, we have three key things have to focus on. First of all, we have to adapting to the central governments mechanism. And also we have to adapt to the technology. And third, we have to be make it make benefit. So just like this morning the share as I said, it's a business, it's not just charity. So for us, we are selecting a special tree like yellow horn It's a native wood oil tree that very suitable for planting in the desert and deserts and Kirby in China's northeast part. So for the past 10 years, we have make it realize and we have planning more than 300 hectares in the area and we have after calculated, we there are 5000, nearly $1, 000 investment and after three years and we can balance the investment and after that, we we can make benefits. If we plant other native grass under the trees and we make more benefits in three of five three or four years. And that's why we this model will be scaled up in North Park and even Our group has a meeting with Mongolian companies that we want to export our models to Mongolia next year. And I think this is our model. And it makes that what makes the land project bankable? That is one thing, find the suitable projects, or I mean the plans to make it suitable.

Thank you very much, Lishwuki, and many thanks to all our panelists here for this fascinating discussion on how you make land bankable. Many thanks to all of you. And next, we are delighted to welcome Emeline Fellous, who's senior director for agriculture and food at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. She will present the recommendations emerging from private sector value chains and the consultation bringing those priorities to governments. Emeline, over to you.

Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. A pleasure to be here. So I'm supposed to be clicking through exactly. So my name is Emeline. I'm senior director at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which is an organization working with 250 multinational companies aiming to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, resilient and inclusive world. I'm delighted to be standing in front of you today to share with you this business backed recommendations for policymakers on how to unlock more public private investments in regenerative landscapes. So this document was created after a number of consultations that we made over months with hundreds of business representatives. And this was commissioned by the UNCCD Secretariat itself. as per decision number six on private sector and decision number 19 on regenerative agriculture. I'm gonna give you a sneak preview of the companies, the organizations that were consulted and the reason why they were consulted, why they cared and why they fed into this, it's because they need to find ways to ensure the resilience of their supply chains and to unlock market opportunities. We've heard a lot about it. They know that this is a business case. The difficulty is how do we bring together those co-investments, as we heard. And so I'm going to walk you through the three main recommendations that came out of these that are meant for policymakers to consider if they want to be able to unlock this huge amount of investment that is available in the private sector. So there are three policy asks. They're not rocket science, but they're not easy for governments to implement actually. The first one is create a coherent and stable policy environment. Why is that and what is meant? We heard in the very beginning of the panel, one of the representatives of the government saying that the policies are not coherent. We know there is a lot of subsidies that still go to ways of producing that are actually detrimental to the resilience of our value chain. So rather than creating new subsidies for alternatives, let me just get rid of the old ones and make sure that what you have is coherent and really supports the direction we need to get to. Stable because we know that the land degradation neutrality targets have a term of 10 years. So if governments change their policies every two years, that is not giving the stable environment for companies to be able to invest. Not easy when there is a change of government, but really critical if you want to direct investments there. The second ask is building a long-term investment vision to create the necessary conditions to de-risk investments and share the costs, the risks and the benefits fairly across players. We've heard a lot about it, I won't say more about that, but you'll find more information if you scan the QR code. And finally, something really important that I know is being discussed in the other room over there is how can we align the frameworks across the Rio conventions, across policymakers, different protocols and others that are all asking to show progress, to measure impact, but across different types of KPIs, different reporting frameworks that are just not conducive to really direct investments in the same direction. And ultimately, I'm calling on to the policy makers to consider those asks and to use them in three potential ways. Use it as a checklist. Test your national LDN strategies against these conditions. See what seem to be there, what doesn't seem to be there. A menu. You can identify one or two policy asks that aligns to your national priorities and see how you can unlock these investments. And lastly, please do work with businesses on unlocking some of the solutions. There is hubs, the business for land hubs that are being set up. There is WBCSD global partners all over the world. There is industry associations. Let's continue to do what we've just seen, very concrete examples of how the public and the private are working together and investing together. I think that's it. So basically, I'm gonna call on now to two different member companies that we are gonna talk to policy makers and give examples of how indeed some of these challenges, but also opportunities can be unlocked. I guess here we are. So I'm gonna call on here, Julie Green, who is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Olam Agri, and Natasha Santos, the Head of Sustainability and Strategic Engagement, Vice President Bayer. Do we also call in at the moment? Okay, so maybe I'll let you continue.

Thank you very much, Emily. And I'm gonna be doing the handover here, but just a minute, because we have lots of people here in the room. You are here for the mining forum. It has been delayed slightly only by 15, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe 10, okay? So five minutes, I'm told at the end of the room. Well, basically, we're going to come to you very shortly. But before we do that, we have to pursue our recommendations, of course, and just a very quick panel here before we wrap up. Okay. So can I please call His Excellency Abou Bamba, his Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development and the Ecological Transition of Cote d'Ivoire, please. Is His Excellency with us? Johannes Sattorf, who is Parliamentary State Secretary at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Gentlemen, welcome. And can I please ask for more microphones here on stage, please?

Thank you.

Yes, please, let's take a seat. So welcome to all of you. So we've just had the private sector ask from you, Emlyn. Now we're going to hear the government response very quickly because as I mentioned, we've got the mining forum coming up next. So Minister Bamba, to start with, you helped organize UNCCD COP15 in Abidjan in 2022, which mobilized $2.5 billion in commitments. So you know what it means to move from negotiation to mobilization. We've now heard business asking for clearer frameworks, de-risking and investable pipelines. So what is Cote d'Ivoire's response to that ask? And what would it take for your government to act on these recommendations and others?

Okay, thank you, Moderator. Good afternoon, everybody. with regard to the guarantees that a government can provide to the private sector in terms of investment in sustainable mining, there are a lot of good reasons, you know, for concrete partnership between government and the private sector in investing in the mining industry. Let me give you a couple of examples. In countries such as Cote d'Ivoire, 35% of the gold in West Africa is located in this country. But of course, we want this gold to be exploited. We want to get money from this exploitation and then get this money to create and distribute wealth amongst the community. But what we're telling the private sector is that the exploitation of mineral resources and gold included shall not be done at the expenses of the ecosystems. It's not either we exploit gold or we develop. It's the two together. And then the government of Cote d'Ivoire will provide the guarantee, the security of investment, how you can transfer your profits to some other countries. So in a nutshell, what I want to say is that the government message is that we can balance the exploitation of mineral resources and the sustainable development and the improvement of livelihoods of our people.

Thank you very much, Minister. Can I please ask the room here to maybe be a little bit quieter so we can hear our distinguished panelists a little bit better. I know you're impatient to kickstart the mining forum, but we haven't quite finished with the recommendations here. I'm turning to you next, State Secretary Satof, because Germany is one of the world's major providers of bilateral development and climate finance. And you've heard the private sector ask for policy certainty, blended structures and bankable projects. So what's your response?

Yeah, first of all, thanks for your question. And I think it's crucial that both worlds, public world and private world understand each other. So it absolutely makes sense that there is a process of having recommendations and that we are able to understand each other. Then, I mean, our targets can only be achieved if all concerned actors work closely together as complementary partners and that's very important for us and Germany highly welcomes the increasing awareness among private sector actors about land and drought related risks and dependencies and we are pleased by the consultation process over the last half year among private actors and the agriculture and food sector. It is very important for us to get the information because when I'm in the committee of the German Bundestag, I have to explain what we are doing, how do we bridge or build a bridge between private sector and public sector. And that's very important to get this recommendations to tell the political responsible persons how we try to work and how we want to be engaged into it and what is being presented let me emphasize this perhaps we are in a short time today is a good start but should only be the beginning I mean it's not only asking the private sector what are your aims and where do you see the perspective we have to go the way together so it's not only at the beginning and now we know how it works we have to be be partners together to get the best results.

Thank you very much for that. Let's bring the business perspective back in with Julie and Natasha because we've now had two governments respond directly to the recommendations your delegation has brought here. So very candidly, let me ask you, are governments meeting business halfway? Is there still a gap and if there is, where exactly is this gap?

Okay, and I think we have one minute for this, right? Absolutely. I mean, I think that there are many models out there that work to address the challenge, the big challenge for our world, how do we feed the world by 2050? you know, with growing pressure on land, the big challenge for our farmers, you know, how do they make this investment in those two to five years when they're not able to absorb the transition costs yet? And yet we know that the benefits to soil health, to productivity, to water retention, to reduce input dependencies accrues over a much longer time period. So this is why we're particularly keen on, I mean, all of the recommendations, but policy area two, building the long-term investment vision and de-risking investment, and de-risking it in a couple of ways that we see really works in some models. So, for example, on the investment side, we've talked about blended finance several times, but I want to emphasize the phasing of that finance, which may be more grants-oriented and technical assistance-oriented in the beginning, going towards concessional, going towards commercial financing, and even payment for ecosystem services. And then finally, on the regenerative side, making sure that our long-term vision is, it's about the investment, it's about how does the money get into those hands, but it's also about the vision across the landscape. We do a lot of efforts at cotton farmers in Cote d'Ivoire, for example, but that's a mosaic of efforts. So having what we can really build are truly regenerative landscapes with government.

Thank you very much. Natasha, you have the final word.

10 seconds. I'll be super fast. So really quickly using my head as business for land champion, member of WBCSD, I am the chair of food and agriculture, the business at OECD. So this was made by hundreds of hands and shows really what the business sector think. I swear to God, and I think many of you know as well, that we are not shortage of solutions in agriculture. There are a lot of solutions that address many of the things we've been talking here. We are shortage many times of conditions that allow those to scale and make farmers successful. And policy is one of the main conditions in many others, of course, but is one of the main aspects that can enable the conditions to scale. So Emily was very clear on our three priorities and we are here to build the bridge and to help governments and the private sector, other companies in the value chain to help those solutions to scale.

Thank you very much for that. Let's have a round of applause, please, for our distinguished panelists here. Are we ready to formally close this exchange with a photograph because the WBCSD recommendations we have been discussing will be handed directly to the governments represented here, of course, Minister Bamba and State Secretary Satov on behalf of Cote d'Ivoire and Germany. Please accept the recommendations from the WBCSD delegations. And can we have a photographer, please? for this very important and highly symbolic moment. Okay. So there you go. The recommendations have now formally been received by Cote d'Ivoire and Germany. Next, I'd like to invite our host country to join us for the closing photograph. Please, let's welcome His Excellency, Mukhtamir Batbayar, Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Mongolia, if he's able to join us. And Samid Ayebash of COP31. Is Samid here with us? Maybe not. Can we just wait a second, please? We're going to take a final photograph. And we have Andrea Messa here, of course, of UNCCD with us to take this final photograph. And can I now please, sorry, before everyone goes, can I please invite all the champions back on stage for a final photograph with all the parties involved, please? Okay. Your Excellencies, Mr. Satov and Bamba, can you please join us here on stage for the final photograph, please? Yes, we're nearly done. So can I please invite all the champions to join everyone here on stage? I think so. So you will see all the companies standing behind these recommendations, the businesses committing to de-risk and scale investment in land alongside government. And I think that deserves a big round of applause for your commitment. So many thanks to all of you, your excellencies and distinguished guests. So over the course of this session, we have traveled from film to finance, from individual actors to global capital, and from commitments to the mechanisms needed to deliver them. Once again, many thanks to all our speakers, our partners, and to all of you here for joining us. That concludes the de-risk and scale conversation here at the Business for Land Forum. Many thanks, and over to you, Mining Forum.